N&S Gaia, a womenswear brand by Sidharth Sinha, began in 2013 using crafts from a remote village in northeast India. As a brand, they work to use natural fibres to produce sustainable and essential fabrics and pay homage to the craft of ‘Dakmanda’, a hand weaving embroidery technique that comes from the Gargo tribe in northeast India. Following SANT’s review of his AW17 show, ‘The Hybrid’, SANT spoke to Sinha in an exclusive interview below.

SANT: How did you become interested in fashion?

Sinha: I was pursuing my graduation in computer science. However, I realised my interest was towards art and design since my childhood.

When did you realise it was something you wanted to pursue?

I was not very sure to make it a career but lately, I felt creativity is something that has always given me self-satisfaction, though I was not clear how to pursue it. It happened naturally.

How do you use up-cycling and sustainable fabrics in your work?

As I was working in this field and somehow realised that we need something meaningful to grow in fashion, personally I was not very happy with the upper facts of fashion where it has no soul, meaning or a meaning behind it. For me, humanity is the main point of view. I mainly use waste trims from factories for my surface development and recycle fibres for the fabric –rayon viscose, cotton viscose, silk viscose and few raw silks including waste fabrics like Neoprene. I believe we need to first reuse our waste in industry and then go towards the purest form of sustainability by restructuring, by cutting down on water waste of natural dyeing. Also, the cotton farming consumes lots of water.

Do you hope for fashion to be more sustainable in the future? How do you see this happening?

This is not going to be easy and quick as I explained, but we need to cut down and reuse what we have and then think of restructuring the map.

What was your inspiration for your AW17 collection? What were you trying to achieve?

The inspiration behind AW17 was the surreal pictorial view of a dreamy day. I am highly devoted towards nature, so was travelling to one of the Hill Station in India it’s called BAGSU. I was trying to see small little details through my camera lens, few of them turned out surreal forms of nature. I could see forms like a butterfly and few alien forms, creatures which I imagined in nature.

My point of view and thought process was to find out the most out of what we have in our surroundings, to create something pure and harmless within our boundaries.

What were the main differences between SS17 and AW17?

Both of the collections are surrounded by nature and it’s main pillar sustainability. The only difference is that the AW17 inspiration is the purest form from nature, and SS17 was more about the Coliseum architecture and had the feel of humanity, including elements in nature. SS17 for me was a celebration of art, with its dramatic forms and colours.

However, the AW17 collection was a move towards more wearable pieces but with a shift of more natural thought process towards its Inspiration.